Laith A. Jawad obtained a degree (M.Sc.) in fish taxonomy from the Zoology Department, University of Bristol, UK in 1980. He continued as fish taxonomist at Basrah University, Iraq, where he worked for more than 20 years before he immigrated to New Zealand in 1997. During this time, he started the biochemical taxonomy of fishes of Iraq and published over 300 scientific papers and book reviews in leading scientific journals. He is the author and co-author of several textbooks in biology published in Arabic. Recently, he contributed five chapters to a book about coastal fishes," Coastal fishes, habitat, behavior and conservation", published by Nova Publishers, Canada. He served as fish biodiversity and consultant at the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in Oman for the period 2008-2012 during which he co-authored two papers describing a new fish species from the Omani waters and reported over 70 fish species as a new record to the Omani waters. He authored a guide to the fishes of the southern coasts of Oman, which will be published by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in Oman. He also published over 80 papers on fish fauna of Oman, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.